I’m not convinced that any horror filmmaker has influenced other horror filmmakers more than John Carpenter, whose past work has become particularly influential to filmmakers of today. Recent hits such as It Follows and “Stranger Things” were oozing with Carpenter inspiration, and it looks like the sequel to Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers will be cut from a similar cloth.

Johannes Roberts, who unleashes 47 Meters Down this weekend, is currently filming The Strangers 2, and he says that Carpenter was a huge influence on it.

“I’m in week two of filming. It looks absolutely incredible,” Roberts told Dread Central. “I love Bertino’s film, I think it’s an amazing movie and tonally this movie is going to fit very well into that universe. It has a real strong emotional heart, which the first one did, and it has a very cool retro feel to it, a lot of sort of references to… I mean, I always bring a lot of John Carpenter with me because that’s what I grew up on, but also maybe going back a bit earlier to the seventies movies, from Don’t Look Now to Duel, the Spielberg movie, even Christine a bit, the John Carpenter movie.”

He continued, “All of these influences are finding their way into the movie, but I think it’s going to be a real fantastic movie. I’m super excited about it.”

In the sequel, scripted by Bertino and Ben Ketai…

The film follows a family whose road trip takes a turn when they arrive at a secluded mobile home park and after the power goes out they decide to hunker down for the night in a borrowed trailer. Under the cover of darkness, three familiar masked psychopaths pay them a visit to test their every limit.

I felt compelled to revisit the original Flatliners trailer after watching the one for Niels Arden Oplev’s remake of Joel Schumacher’s 1990 cult thriller. It’s actually surprising how vastly different they are, which I guess is a good thing? We always beg for filmmakers to try something new when revisiting an old property but that doesn’t guarantee it’s going to be any good. 27 years later, Schumacher’s Flatliners, starring Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, and Julia Roberts as four Medical students who experiment on “near death” experiences, is still awfully unnerving. The film’s original trailer is gritty, earthy, and wickedly lo-fi, not to mention quite scary. Dig it.

We don’t yet have a release date for Masterfully Macabre’s upcoming documentary To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story, but we know you guys are as hungry as we are for more information about it. The doc will dig deep into Hodder’s life and career, telling stories you’ve never heard before, and we’ve got four new images for ya today.

Check ’em out below, along with an exclusive clip and the trailer!

The in-depth documentary includes interviews with Kane Hodder, Bruce Campbell, Bill Moseley, Cassandra Peterson, Sid Haig and Danielle Harris, to name just a few.

To Hell and Back is a harrowing story of a stuntman overcoming a dehumanizing childhood filled with torment and bullying in Sparks, Nevada. After surviving a near-death burn accident, he worked his way up through Hollywood, leading to his ultimate rise as Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th series and making countless moviegoers forever terrified of hockey masks and summer camp.

After decades of watching Kane Hodder on screen, get ready to meet the man behind the mask in To Hell and Back – a uniquely human story about one of cinema’s most vicious monsters.

Masterfully Macabre Entertainment will present both domestic and international premieres and bring the highly anticipated doc to audiences around the world.

The final girl trope has long been a staple in horror and refers to the last woman left standing to confront the killer. She’s the survivor left to tell the tale. Though the term was only coined in 1992 by film professor and author Carol J. Clover, the final girl has persisted for decades prior. The trope is so intertwined with the genre, that the phrase already triggers a long list of popular final girls at its mere mention. Laurie Strode, Nancy Thompson, Sidney Prescott, Alice Hardy, and Ellen Ripley are rightfully celebrated as the toughest women in horror. But they aren’t the only Final Girls worth celebrating. Whether their films were underseen, underrated, or forgotten, here’s 10 more final girls that deserve more love:

Alice Johnson – A Nightmare on Elm Street series

When it comes to this beloved series, most fans fondly recall Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson as their favorite final girl. While she deserves every bit of the praise and adoration, there’s another final girl in the franchise that’s often overlooked; Alice Johnson. Alice is introduced in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master as the best friend of Kristen Parker, the final girl from Dream Warriors. Alice begins the movie as a timid girl from a dysfunctional family, using her lucid dreaming as a means of escape. When Kristen pulled Alice into her nightmare, she transfers her powers to Alice upon her death. As the movie progresses, Alice amasses the power of every one of her friends killed by Freddy Krueger, making her one fierce adversary. No longer the shy girl, Alice becomes a force to be reckoned with. Her character growth makes her transition into final girl even more fun, but that she survives not one but two rounds with Freddy makes her deserving of far more attention than she’s received so far.

Jannicke – Cold Prey & Cold Prey 2

Cold Prey and its sequel aren’t exactly original; they borrow heavily from American slashers, namely Halloween and Friday the 13th. Fans of slashers will pick up immediately who will and won’t survive. Yet, they’re extremely stylish and brutal. The icy setting of the old, abandoned ski lodge makes for a thrilling location. Then there’s Jannicke, a strong-willed woman that seems a lot like Ginny Field from Friday the 13th Part 2. She’s half the size of the giant killer, but her athleticism and strong desire to live compensates for the massive size difference, resulting in a thrilling head-to-head battle. The killer isn’t fond of losing, though, and round two commences in the hospital set sequel (sound familiar?). When the staff and police fall violently at the hands of the revived mountain man, Jannicke once again faces off against him.

Barbara – Night of the Living Dead (1990)

The 1990 remake of Romero’s classic is an underrated gem in its own right; George Romero re-wrote the screenplay and persuaded Tom Savini to take on directorial duties after initially being hired to handle special effects. The most revelatory update to the zombie classic, however, was the reimagining of lead heroine Barbara. Unlike her 1968 counterpart, this Barbara doesn’t fall into a state of shock and hysterics upon losing her brother to a zombie in the film’s opening sequence. Instead, she becomes a vital asset to the group of survivors holed up in a farmhouse. Played by Patricia Tallman, this more modern take on Barbara eschews her shrinking violet nature in favor of intelligence and toughness. This version of Barbara not only outlasts on her wits alone but ruthlessly delivers a satisfying conclusion to the power battle between hero Ben (Tony Todd) and obnoxious jerk Harry Cooper (Tom Towles).

Meg Penny – The Blob (1988)

The amorphous monster at the center of this creature feature proved to be a terrifying match for even the military. Crash landing from space as a small entity, the Blob quickly amasses into a size that threatens to engulf the entire town. Enter Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith), an unwitting cheerleader that suffers perhaps the worst first date in history, when nice guy Paul becomes one of the first victims to be dissolved and devoured by the Blob. Yet, Meg doesn’t let it keep her down for long. She not only discovers the creature’s origins but also figures out the way to stop it. She also uses her charm to woo the town’s black sheep, Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon), to assist in saving the day. When an entire town quarantined by the military are helpless, leave it to one pissed off cheerleader to take care of business.

Yasmine – Frontier(s)

Granted, this 2007 entry in the New French Extremity movement feels like countless horror films before it, borrowing memorable plotlines and moments from films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes or Hostel. Yet the balls to the wall level of violence and gore was so over the top that it didn’t matter. The NC-17 rating slapped on by the MPAA is a giant clue that final girl Yasmine worked harder than perhaps anyone else on this list to earn her final girl status. The Neo-Nazi family that dispatches Yasmine’s friends are brutal, yet Yasmine matches their viciousness by ripping out the throats of her attackers, impaling them on a table saw, and using any means necessary to survive. This blood-soaked final girl takes no prisoners.

Taylor Gentry – Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

A clever mockumentary that lovingly pokes fun at the slasher genre also takes the relationship between final girl and killer in a whole different direction. Unlike most, where the killer stalks the final girl over the course of the film until the explosive showdown, this movie sees its final girl, Taylor Gentry, developing feelings for Leslie Vernon, as he shares his meticulous plan to slaughter teens over the course of one night. Once Taylor and her crew discover that Leslie’s plans for murder weren’t a farce, the film shifts to traditional horror, and the realization that Taylor was always the intended final girl makes for one of the most fun showdowns in slasher history. The foreplay between these would-be lovers is killer.

Megan Garris – Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

When it comes to this franchise, it’s usually the first two final girls of the series that hog the spotlight; Alice Hardy and Ginny Field. Yet it’s Jennifer Cooke’s sassy portrayal of Megan Garris that makes her my favorite final girl of the Friday the 13th series. Her zeal for breaking rules and rebelling against her father, Sheriff Mike Garris, makes for a lively counterpart to Tommy Jarvis’ (Thom Matthews) serious man on a mission. While Tommy, responsible for reviving Jason Voorhees in the first place, does all that he can to correct his mistake, it’s ultimately Megan that saves the day, both in rescuing a drowning Tommy and taking a boat motor to Voorhees’ neck. Final girls are known for their killer survival instincts, but Megan’s fearless passion for life sets her apart from the pack.

Tuffy – Feast

Tuffy doesn’t have a lot going for her when Feast begins. She’s a down on her luck waitress at a bar who moonlights as a prostitute, and her sole source of happiness is her young son. That happiness is ripped away from her violently, thanks to the gross creatures that descend upon the bar. When the bar patrons and purported heroes can’t seem to get their act together to ward off the creatures, Tuffy gets fed up and takes matters into her own hands. When both life and weird horny man-eating monsters keep Tuffy down, she fights back. Hard. Her revenge against the creatures earns her the title of “Heroine 2.”

Amy Harper – The Funhouse

Elizabeth Berridge’s Amy Harper begins as just another one of many horror teens that wished they’d obeyed their parents by the time the end credits begin to roll. Despite her father’s wishes, Amy sneaks out of the house to meet her new boyfriend, her best friend, and her best friend’s boyfriend to visit a traveling carnival. Sneaking around where they shouldn’t, the group ends up locked in the carnival’s funhouse for the night with a deformed Gunther in pursuit. It’s good girl Amy who winds up confronting the terrifying Gunther alone, resulting in one of the tensest final battles in slasher history. Of course, the unique setting helps. She may have been a simple good girl with a small rebellious streak, but her brutal slaying of her attacker earns her worthy final girl status.

Angela Vidal – [REC] series

What should have been a dull night covering the night shift at a local fire station became reporter Angela Vidal’s worst nightmare. A call results in Angela, her cameraman Pablo, and two firefighters investigating an aggressive woman locked in her apartment. You know the drill. The woman bites an officer, and before you know it this zombie-like rage virus spreads throughout the apartment building just as it’s quarantined. Just as lone survivor makes it all the way to the top, she seems to fall prey to the virus’ source, a very creepy Tristana Medeiros, and the camera cuts to black. For a final girl, it’s a pretty weak ending, right? Except, halfway through the sequel, REC 2, Angela is revealed to not only still be alive, but she’s kicking butt and determined to finally make it out of the building. Considering the sequel’s final reveal, a case could still be made against the plucky reporter for being a worthy final girl. Except, her return in the final entry in the series, REC 4: Apocalypse, has her squaring off against Medeiros infection once and for all. What should have been an easy reporting job turned into a hell that spanned three films, a possession by way of parasitic worm, an exorcism, and a whole lot of carnage in between. Perhaps she, more than anyone on this list, endured the longest to earn her spot.

I’m not sure what the longest span of time between a song and its video is, but German thrash metal legends KREATOR damn sure took their sweet time making a video for their ‘Pleasure to Kill.’ The track, featured on the same-named album that was released way back in 1986, only got a video this week… over 30 years after the song was first heard!

Directed by Dariusz Szermanowicz and Rafal Szermanowicz, the long-awaited ‘Pleasure to Kill’ music video is inspired by gory slasher films from the time period in which the song was recorded, and it was whipped up due to the recent re-release of the album and three others from the KREATOR library: “Endless Pain,” “Pleasure To Kill,” “Terrible Certainty” and “Extreme Aggression,” all remastered and available now.

The premise? An attractive young woman meets a murderous madman, of course!

“I came up with the idea to add a trashy storyline that captures the vibe of the year 1986,” frontman Mille Petrozza explains. “The album concept was loosely based on a fake documentary called Faces of Death, and everyone in the band was a big fan of early slasher movies made by directors like Hershel Gordon Lewis, Lucio Fulci, and Tobe Hooper. This is our tribute to the glorious times of that genre.”

The series is set seven years after the world has become a frozen wasteland, and the remnants of humanity inhabit a gigantic, perpetually moving train that circles the globe.

Basso will play LJ Anderson, a quiet, diligent, Midwestern girl, who lives with her parents in a fourth-class cabin and works in the greenhouse car. Poor but not as desperate as those that live in the tail of the train, LJ has made peace with her daily routine until a major event shakes up her world.

Frolova will portray Pixi Aariak. Pixi is strange, mysterious, and inscrutable, a charismatic chameleon and probably inspired the expression “still waters run deep.” She returns to the front of the train after a three-year sentence in the prison car and struggles to acclimate to her old life. You can’t take your eyes off of her. And you probably shouldn’t.

Basso will next be seen in Screen Gems feature The Slender Man opposite Joey King and Julia Goldani Telles.

Via Screen Rant, it was just announced that BOOM! Studios is taking a page out of the Wolverine playbook with upcoming comic series Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack, set to tell the tale of Jack Burton’s final ride in the Pork-Chop Express!

Written by John Carpenter and Anthony Burch (Borderlands 2), the four-issue series will be kicking off in September.

In Old Man Jack…

The year is 2020, and hell is literally on Earth. Ching Dai, sick of relying on screw-ups like Lo Pan to do his bidding, has broken the barriers between Earth and the infinite hells, and declared himself ruler of all.

Sixty-year-old Jack Burton is alone in a tiny corner of Florida with only his broken radio to talk to, until one day it manages to pick up a message. Someone is out there in the hellscape, and they know a way to stop Ching Dai.

Check out the main cover for #Issue 1 below, which will have multiple variants!

Yesterday Variety reported that Paladin had acquired domestic theatrical rights to horror-thriller They Remain, starring William Jackson Harper and Rebecca Henderson. Now, check out some of the first ever images.

“Harper and Henderson portray scientists employed by a vast, impersonal corporation to investigate an unspeakable horror that took place at the remote encampment of a mysterious cult. Working and living in a state-of-the-art, high tech environment that is completely at odds with their surroundings, they spend their days gathering physical evidence, analyzing it, and reporting on their findings.

When Henderson’s character discovers a mysterious artifact of unknown origin, the dynamic between them changes: secrets are kept, sexual tensions arise, and paranoia sets in. Having lost all sense of what is real and what is imagined, all he knows is that the horror they have been sent to uncover now threatens his very survival.”

Philip Gelatt directed They Remain from his own script, adapted from the 2010 short story by Laird Barron.

Will Battersby produced through his Reno Productions. Gelatt re-teamed on They Remain with Reno Productions, which also produced his 2011 debut feature The Bleeding House.Paladin and Reno are prepping They Remain for a film festival launch and theatrical release commencing in the fall.

Gelatt has worked as a graphic novelist and comic book creator for the Indiana Jones franchise, and for such companies as Dark Horse Comics and Oni Press. He also worked as a video game writer for such companies as Crystal Dynamics and Frictional Games, and on Rise of The Tomb Raider, for which he won the Writers Guild of America Award.

Dimension and Spike TV’s “The Mist” opens with a shot of a spider, which is a metaphor for the web the residents of Bridgeville, Maine are trapped in. It’s also instant foreshadowing that becomes a reoccurring theme throughout the show.

“The Mist”, adapted from Stephen King‘s novel, spends the opening moments of the series intercutting between a soldier and the residents of Bridgeville. The soldier awakens with amnesia but catches a glimpse of a terrifying fog rolling into town. Meanwhile, Eve (Alyssa Sutherland) and Kevin (Morgan Spector) Copeland fight over letting their daughter, Alex (Gus Birney), attend a party.

The pilot takes its time introducing the town’s characters and setting up their series arcs. Penned by Amanda Segel and Christian Torpe, “The Mist” fights hard to wedge in social commentary, from drugs to bullying, sexual preference, and even rape. Yes, the major conflict in the first episode begins when Alex alleges that Jay (Luke Cosgrove), the town football star, raped her. A rift is formed between her parents being that Kevin allowed her to go to the party behind Eve’s back. While the social commentary is commendable, I see many having an issue with how it’s presented; not only do the locals not believe her, but the show eludes to the idea that maybe she’s lying. This, of course, isn’t socially acceptable, yet it’s impossible to know where the writers are taking this arc over the course of the season.

But I digress, the point is that the writers are working overtime to insert drama, conflict and add more than one dimension to a story that needs to be more than a horror show. That’s the difficult task at hand; how do they expand on King’s story without blowing the load too early? “The Mist” is more about people being monsters than the show’s creatures. This hearkens back to George A. Romero’s initial zombie trilogy, especially Dawn of the Dead.

Once the mist actually rolls in, the town’s people are caught in a web and unable to move. One group find themselves trapped in a mall, where they’re fighting fear and paranoia, while unseen horrors outside drive their insanity. Here, shit hits the fan, and it never slows down. Those hoping for monsters are going to have to wait being that it appears the first season will torment the town with “normal” insects. Still, these bugs are vicious as they devour anyone who crosses their path; it’s violent, bloody and absolutely bonkers. The hope is that the filmmakers are able to continually deliver the goods over the course of ten episodes, which will have to be deluded by more character work.

Speaking of, Frances Conroy‘s performance is enough to warrant a weekly return to Bridgeville. She’s being set up as one of the town’s antagonists and single-handedly elevates the quality of the pilot episode. Just wait until you see what comes next…

And while the debut does a solid job of setting up various mysteries, the one thing that bothers me is the opening sequence with the soldier and his dog; it’s a constant reminder that the military has something to do with the mist. With that said, “The Mist” is a beautiful blend of drama and horror that delivers on its immediate promise. Feeling like an episode of “Friday Night Lights” with man-eating insects, “The Mist” is as dense as it’s terrifying and promises to be one of the best new genre shows on television.

Fox has released yet another stunning piece of footage from War of the Planet of the Apes.

Caesar (Andy Serkis) and his band of Simian brothers discover an unknown, newly evolved ape named “Bad Ape” (Steve Zahn) – an escapee from a zoo. For the first time in the trilogy, Caesar and his apes discover a new ape outside of their tribe, marking a critical moment in the war between Humans and Apes.

Something interesting that I immediately noticed was that “Bad Ape” is constantly shown standing/sitting in front of fire. I don’t think this is an accident and is foreshadowing Bad Ape quite literally being “bad” – he does give off a Gollum vibe, ironically played by Serkis.

In the film, after the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the Colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species and the future of the planet.

Andy Serkis returns as Caesar, with Judy Greer as Caesar’s wife, with Woody Harrelson added to the growing battle.

Ted Geoghegan made his directorial debut with the impressive We Are Still Here, a film that many horror fans named one of the very best of 2015. What’s next from Geoghegan? His action-horror-revenge film Mohawk is set to premiere at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, and the first two images have surfaced.

After one of her tribe sets an American soldiers’ camp ablaze, a young female Mohawk finds herself pursued by a ruthless band of renegades bent on revenge. Fleeing deep into the woods, Mohawk youths Oak and Calvin confront the bloodthirsty Colonel Holt and his soldiers. As the Americans seem to close in from all sides, the trio must summon every resource both real and supernatural as the brutal attack escalates.

Mohawk reteams Geoghegan with co-screenwriter Grady Hendrix, author of “Horrorstör,” as well as producers Greg Newman and Travis Stevens.

One of the films we cannot wait to see next year is director Jon Turteltaub’s Meg, the long-awaited adaptation of the New York Times best-selling book by Steve Alten. Jason Statham stars in the action-horror film about a mega-sized Megalodon shark, which recently wrapped filming – Statham describes it as “Jaws meets Jurassic Park“!

While we wait for the trailer, we wanted to whet your appetite for the deep sea horror to come by showing off a couple pieces of fan-made Meg poster art that we are absolutely in love with. They come courtesy of artist David Graham, who whipped up two different concepts that stress the massive, prehistoric size of the titular monster.

Again, these are not in any way official, but they sure are cool!

Meg will swim into theaters on August 10, 2018.

In Meg…

A deep-sea submersible—part of an international undersea observation program—has been attacked by a massive creature, previously thought to be extinct, and now lies disabled at the bottom of the deepest trench in the Pacific…with its crew trapped inside. With time running out, expert deep sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor is recruited by a visionary Chinese oceanographer, against the wishes of his daughter Suyin, to save the crew—and the ocean itself—from this unstoppable threat: a pre-historic 75-foot-long shark known as the Megalodon.

What no one could have imagined is that, years before, Taylor had encountered this same terrifying creature. Now, teamed with Suyin, he must confront his fears and risk his own life to save everyone trapped below…bringing him face to face once more with the greatest and largest predator of all time.

Now over 25 years into their distinguished career, American death-metal band DYING FETUS continues to pummel us with blast beats and crushing riffs. The band is set to release their 8th studio album “Wrong One To Fuck With” June 23rd via Relapse Records, and we have the premiere of the insanely gory and absolutely 100% NSFW video for “Die With Integrity.”

Mitch Massie who helmed the infamous Cattle Decapitation video for “Forced Gender Reassignment” (watch here) along with music videos from Whitechapel and John Frum directed the video. Final notice, the following video is super NSFW, don’t say we didn’t warn you!

Director Mitch Massie commented:

“I wanted to make a revenge tale, a western, and an 80s slasher movie, so I rolled them all up into this video. I love the idea of a guy cutting off heads and attaching them to a chain as he hunts down all the people that fucked his life up only to find out that it was a scorned madame of a brothel that instigated it all.”

The iconic Music Box Theatre is filling a void here in Chicago by announcing CINEPOCALYPSE, a new film festival taking place from November 2-9.

The Midwest’s largest gathering of horror films and fans alike, organizers promise a full week of ass-kicking genre movies, special guests, and events. This year’s Cinepocalypse will feature scary-good world and regional premieres, repertory screenings, special guests, parties, and much more. A full schedule will be announced in October. To purchase early bird badges, visit https://www.musicboxtheatre.com/events/cinepocalypse. For shorts and full-length feature submissions, click here.

Josh Goldbloom, Founder & Artistic Director of The Awesome Fest and what had been known as Bruce Campbell’s Horror Film Festival, and Ryan Oestreich, General Manager of The Music Box Theatre, aim to make this year bigger, better and scarier than any in the festival’s history. Since 2014, the festival has terrorized audiences with an annual slate of premiere films, guests, and bloodcurdling entertainment. Leaving a trail of apocalyptic annihilation in the suburbs, as Cinepocalypse, the festival sheds its suburban skin, forms an epic alliance with the city’s historic Music Box Theatre and reemerges as a brand new horror behemoth for Chicago

The Music Box Theatre stands as one of the nation’s most prestigious art house theaters and has recently made a concerted effort to diversify programming and bolster local audiences. Located on the city’s Northside at 3733 North Southport Ave, The Music Box’s year-round programming has consistently offered genre fans some of the very finest cinematic experiences in digital, 35mm, and 70mm formats.

“We’re beyond thrilled to host this next iteration of the horror film festival,” said Oestreich. “We pride ourselves on taking risks in our programming and offering a diverse slate of films. Partnering with Josh to create Cinepocalypse makes perfect sense for us as we continue our commitment to great film in Chicago.”

In just three short years, what was previously the Bruce Campbell Horror Festival has played host to dozens of horror, thriller and genre legends, including John Carpenter, Fede Alvarez, Eli Roth, Christopher Lloyd, Fred Dekker, Tom Holland, Barbara Crampton, William Sadler, Stephen Lang, comedian Doug Benson, and many more.

“CINEPOCALYPSE will take this iconic film festival to horrific new heights,” said Goldbloom. “We plan on presenting Chicago an unrivaled offering of bloody international badassery & terror with our friends at the Music Box.”

Currently filming in Atlanta is video game adaptation Rampage, a Brad Peyton-directed film that will pit Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson up against a handful of massive monsters. Most of what we know about the movie has come courtesy of Johnson himself, who just shared a really cool set photo over on Twitter.

“We have a problem. The beasts survived,” @TheRock captioned the photo, which has him walking tall against a destroyed backdrop. Check it out below!

Based on the popular Midway video game, Rampage stars Johnson as Davis Okoye, a primatologist who shares an unshakable bond with George, the extraordinarily intelligent, silverback gorilla who has been in his care since birth. But a rogue genetic experiment gone awry transforms this gentle ape into a raging monster.

As we expected, The Conjuring 2 character The Crooked Man is soon getting his own spinoff film, as THR reports today that the movie has been officially confirmed. Mike Van Waes was brought on board to pen the script for New Line, from a story by James Wan.

Based on an English nursery rhyme, the creepy character was portrayed by Javier Botet in The Conjuring 2. No wonder on whether or not he’ll be back, but we assume he will.

Producer Peter Safran recently noted, “I think there’s something fascinating in the Crooked Man. Maybe tonally he’s not as grounded as the Conjuring itself is and maybe that’s why some people felt it wasn’t what they were looking for in the Conjuring but I suspect a movie with him would be really really cool. I just love what that character can be. We have some interesting ideas for him.”

Both Wan and Safran are producing The Crooked Man.

Next up in The Conjuring Universe, Annabelle: Creation will hit theaters August 11, followed by The Nun on Friday, July 13, 2018.

Back in April we told you that Funko had cancelled a planned POP! vinyl toy of Tom Cruise’s Nick Morton from The Mummy, which was to be released alongside toys of Ahmanet as both Princess and Mummy. You’ll currently find the latter two wherever POP! toys are sold, but tracking down the cancelled third toy will be a whole lot harder… and way more expensive.

Over on eBay this week, two of the cancelled toys have popped up in separate listings, and intense bidding wars have driven the prices up to (at the time of writing this article) a staggering $570 and $430, respectively. The former currently has 49 bids with just 5 hours left, while the latter has 14 bids and 2 days remaining.

The reason the toy was pulled? From what we gather, “licensing issues” were cited as the official reason, with most believing that it was Cruise himself who killed the toy. He’s known for not allowing his likeness to be used for merchandising, so it seems likely that it was he who objected to the release of the toy.

By far the best aspect of Texas Chainsaw 3D was that it returned to the events of Tobe Hooper’s original classic, showing us what happened right after the 1974 film came to a close. Similarly, mega fan Gus Trapani has taken the franchise back to its ’70s roots with Sally’s Escape from Hell, a new short that makes me question my stance on fan films being relatively useless.

With Sally’s Escape from Hell, which essentially reimagines Sally Hardesty’s struggle for survival in the final act of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Trapani impressively manages to capture both the manic terror and inherent goofiness that helped make Hooper’s film such a standout slice of horror cinema. The filmmaker explains his goal with the short…

This film was simply a passion project made out of the love we have for Tobe Hooper’s 1974 masterpiece, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The goal was to try and capture the raw feeling of the original film while adding a tad of our own flavor. Shot in two days with no crew.

Check out the incredible short below, which stars Jennie Yates as Sally.

This week marks the 30th anniversary of John McTiernan‘s Predator, which is praised as one of the greatest action flicks of all time. It’s easy to watch the 1987 film now and say, “Damn, this movie is fucking incredible.” But as good as Predator ended up it was a tumultuous and problematic process.

As John highlighted earlier this week, Jean-Claude Van Damme was originally cast as the film’s title character. JCVD was originally hired to play the beast in Predator; and the costume at that time, before Stan Winston took over and Van Damme was replaced by the late Kevin Peter Hall, was an absolute abomination.

While the story has been told many times before, McTiernan reiterates to CinemaBlend why Van Damme quite the film:

“We never shot anything with him. It was a complete screw up with his agent, trying to hustle him into a job and didn’t know what the movie was. It’s silly. It was really silly.“

“It was awful,” says Johnson, “It was ahead of its time, let’s put it that way. But the head did suck.”

In regards to Van Damme, he was allegedly displeased with his role and costume, learning that he’d be invisible through parts of the film.

“He was just off the boat from Brussels, he thought he was going to show his martial arts abilities to the world,” says Johnson. “He thought this was actually the real look of the monster in the movie and he [said] ‘I hate this. I hate this. I hate it. I look like a superhero.’ He was so angry.”

Johnson explaining that the suit was actually a cloaking device, “made him even angrier because he thought he could do his martial arts, he could fight Arnold Schwarzenegger. Impossible. Absolutely impossible.”

While this is the story that’s been shared over the years, I’ve actually heard from people close to both the Predator and Bloodsport productions that there’s more to it. The other side of the story goes like this: Jean-Claude Van Damme had found out during pre-production that his Bloodsport was financed. The Predator production refused to let him out of his contract, which then caused JCVD to sabotage his role and force them to “fire” him. This lines up a bit with the aforementioned quotes, which allege that JCVD became difficult and angry when he saw the costume design and learned of his role.

While it’s impossible to know the full story, it would be awesome to hear Van Damme’s unfiltered side of it. No matter, we all won because Van Damme’s Bloodsport is a masterpiece that helped spawn “Mortal Kombat” and other fighting games, and we were also gifted with gems such as Kickboxer, Lionheart, Universal Soldier, Timecop and, yes, Sudden Death.

Daniel Radcliffe joins director Greg McLean (Wolf Creek, Rogue, The Belko Experiment) in the Bolivian rainforest for tense survival thriller Jungle, based on the bestselling real-life story of adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg. Ahead of the world premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 3rd, we’ve got the intense trailer for ya tonight.

In the early 1980s, 22-year-old Israeli backpacker Yossi Ghinsberg and two friends – Swiss teacher Marcus Stamm and American photographer Kevin Gale – set off from the Bolivian city of La Paz on what was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime. Leading the way into the uncharted Amazon was an Austrian expat named Karl Ruprechter, who had met the friends just days before and claimed to be familiar with the region.

But their dream trip soon turned into a wilderness nightmare from which not all of the men returned.

Thomas Kretschmann, Alex Russell, Joel Jackson and Yasmin Kassim also star in the film, penned by Justin Monjo and filmed in Australia.

McLean produced along with Dana Lustig, Gary Hamilton, Mike Gabrawy and Todd Fellman.